Contents

Early life

Heder was born in Fort Collins, Colorado, and is one of six children of family practice physician Dr. James Heder and his wife Helen.[2] His paternal grandparents, Swedish immigrants, changed the family surname from "Olafsen" to "Heder".[3] Heder has an identical twin brother, Dan, as well as an older sister and brother, Rachel and Doug, and two younger brothers, Adam and Matt. Heder is the nephew by marriage of former NFLrunning back and current WCAU sportscaster, Vai Sikahema.[4]

Heder attended Walker Middle School in Salem, Oregon, and graduated from South Salem High School in 1996, where he was on the swim team and was a member of the Drama Association.

A 2002 alumnus of Brigham Young University, Heder worked on the short CGI animated film "Pet Shop", written by Logan Deans, which earned a non-traditional animation student Emmy in 2005. After his movie career took off, he did not return to complete the work he started on the short, although his name does appear in the credits. Also, while attending BYU he befriended Jared Hess and starred in Hess' short film Peluca, which was later expanded into Napoleon Dynamite. Peluca received rave reviews on the BYU campus after showing at a few college and local film festivals and competitions.

Career

Napoleon Dynamite, filmed in Preston, Idaho, earned more revenue than almost any other Sundance movie.[citation needed] In June 2005, Heder received the MTV Movie Award for Best Musical Performance and Breakthrough Male Performance for the role. On 8 October 2005, he hosted Saturday Night Live with musical guest Ashlee Simpson. After his success with Napoleon Dynamite, for which he was paid only $1,000[citation needed], Heder and his film co-star Efren Ramirez filmed a series of commercials to promote the 2005 UtahState Fair. They appear as their characters from Napoleon Dynamite; in at least one commercial, they are shown with the FFA medals that they won in the context of the movie.

Heder's second turn at voice acting came in 2007 when he voiced the character of Chicken Joe, a surfing chicken, in the animated film Surf's Up. His first foray into web television was in the 2008 web series Woke Up Dead starring and produced by Heder.[6]Woke Up Dead is a web-based, live-action sci-fi comedy thriller about Drex, a twenty-something USC student who wakes up underwater in the bathtub one morning and suspects that he might be dead.

Jon and his twin brother Dan star together as villains in the fourth installment of the popular internet martial arts comedy series Sockbaby.

Heder's performance in When in Rome garnered unusual praise from New York Times critic A. O. Scott: "Jon Heder as a goofy street magician is the funniest of the bunch."[7]

Personal life

Heder lives with his wife Kirsten Heder in Los Angeles, California. The two have been married since 2002. The couple had a girl, Evan Jane Heder, on 6 April 2007.[8]

Heder appeared on the 2 February 2010 edition of late-night TV show Lopez Tonight, where he discussed his "Straight Edge" lifestyle, explaining that he avoids drugs, alcohol and caffeine, in keeping with his Mormon faith.

Jon and Dan

Jon stated during an appearance on Late Show with David Letterman that he and his identical twin, Dan, think alike and, as children, often finished each other's sentences (a common occurrence with identical twins). When Letterman asked him whether being an identical twin is a good experience, Dan replied that it is mostly good and that as children "we caused a lot of trouble by pretending to be the other, the memories still give me a good chuckle."[citation needed]